


Muscle Memory (We Can Watch The White Doves Go)

by thisiswhatthewatergaveme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-20
Updated: 2012-03-20
Packaged: 2017-11-02 06:15:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/365854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiswhatthewatergaveme/pseuds/thisiswhatthewatergaveme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas wakes up in a hospital, and from there, he gets lucky. Maybe too lucky. And luck doesn't last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Muscle Memory (We Can Watch The White Doves Go)

**Author's Note:**

> Because I'm a sucker, I wrote some amnesiac!Cas. This started before the whole promo was up for next weeks episode, and in the mid-season preview, it was just a really quick flash of a lady next to Dean, so I assumed it was a friend of Cas's. And cue the long what-if.

He doesn’t know what they want. All he knows is they won’t stop poking and prodding him. And he knows that, somewhere, he could’ve stopped this, could’ve wrested himself away from their cold, synthetically sheathed hands. But he doesn’t _know_. All he knows is white on all sides and metal under his skin, liquid running through his veins that doesn’t belong there.

 

He spends much time looking at the tiles in a ceiling.

 

When she visits him, it’s by accident.

 

She storms in, flowers in hand, but stops short when she sees him in the bed, instead of a loved one or acquaintance. He’s disappointed her, without even meaning to. Whatever that means, it makes him squirm, somewhere he can only half-feel.

 

“Oh, geez, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge in like this—” She turns to go.

 

“Wait.” His voice sounds like a drought has hit, and he clears his throat to try again. It only makes things worse. “Where am I?”

 

“Um… Wisconsin? Listen, man, I don’t think I’m even allowed to be talking to you, and if you’re an _amnesiac_? I’m totally not. I should go.”

 

“Please,” he manages. So she walks all the way in and sits by the side of his bed.

 

“What’s your name?” This is always the first question.

 

“Dean,” he says. Because it’s already on his tongue and between his teeth, and muscle memory is stronger than true memory.

 

Two weeks later, it’s with Sarah that he leaves, arm folded with hers, taking his first steps—the first steps he can remember.

 

She questions him over microwaved soup and toasted sandwiches, while he learns to bend his hand around a wide ceramic bowl. Muscle memory, he has learned, again and again, is more permanent than true memory. So perhaps he knows no name, but he knows his hands and his feet and perhaps he knows the ache of the scrapes across his back and knees better than he should.

 

“So you’ve got nothing,” she clarifies, just to be certain, he supposes. He’s not sure what else there is to be certain of.

 

“No,” he answers. He likes soup. It’s a warm slide down his throat, and it keeps him warm as it continues to the center of him. But not warm enough. Never warm enough. “Why did you help me?” he asks, when it seems relevant to. The silence has gotten stagnant. He’s not sure where he learned propriety. It was probably the same place he learned to bear a bruise.

 

“Ah…” She fidgets in her discomfort, drawing invisible lines across the rim of her bowl. He can almost see the lines she leaves behind, like an electrical disruption. He can feel it.

 

And then it’s gone and he sips his soup. It’s a marginal degree cooler.

 

“Listen, Dean—” That’s wrong. He knows that. He reacts, on instinct, when she says his name, in a way he shouldn’t if it truly belonged to him.

 

He nods.

 

“I’m not sure. That’s the truth. I just… I saw you, and it looked like you needed help. You looked… wrong.”

 

His mouth twists up. He’s amused. “You mean like a patient with a brain injury?”

 

“ _No_.” She’s frustrated; her fingers leave the bowl to curl in on themselves over the tablecloth. He can hear the muscles shift and relax and tighten, the tendons rearrange themselves. He takes another sip. “Like an after-effect, you know? You’ll see a great big flash of light, and when it’s gone, there’s just shadows there. You looked like that.”

 

“A shadow of my former self. An accurate analysis. I assure you, I would be different could I remember anything.”

 

They take a walk, because she needs air. There is a small bird in the middle of the path. He stoops down to pick it up, ignoring her protests. He can see it’s muscles moving the way he could hear hers, and he runs his fingers down the feathers. It’s supposed to be soothing, he thinks. The bird stills. He can see where its tiny bones have disconnected by brutal, blunt force.

 

So he fixes it. It flies away.

 

He continues to walk, and leaves it to Sarah to catch up. She does. And she talks about the weather they’ve been having.

 

If he could classify emotion, it would be a positive one that accompanies the swelling of her voice underneath the lampposts.

 

She tries to talk about it the first night. He claims a headache, and he (he might feel regret about this) alarms her, and it’s unpleasant, but it gets her to stop, and she makes a cot up for him in the living room, with two extra blankets. She may fuss, but it’s comfortable and warm, and he can’t bring himself to worry about anything because he drops away from the world when he sleeps.

 

 -~-

“So, Dean—” _Wrong_. “—what can you tell me about yourself?” Sarah says it patiently and easily, resting her chin on her fists, looking up at him from the table. He fiddles with the fork in his hands, chasing a pea across the bowl. It’s trapped. On every side is a great white wall. It feels like the inside of his head.

 

“Nothing,” he says.

 

“There’s something,” she says firmly. “There’s always something. I don’t want your memories—”

 

“Then what do you want?” He’s getting frustrated; he can’t help it. He knows, somewhere, that there used to be more than this. More than living in an apartment, and more than eating warm dinners and living calmly and safely. And _dully_. He can feel it itching underneath his skin.

 

“I want to know what you’re feeling right now,” Sarah says, unflappable. She tucks a lock of auburn hair behind her ear and continues to stare at him, letting the silence crackle between them.

 

“I… used to be more. Than this.” He gestures at himself, at all of himself, welcoming her to find the problem. Find the hole so that he can plug it. Find a break for him to fix.

 

Her gaze has sharpened. “Are we talking about your memory here, or something else?”

 

There’s something knowing in the eyes on him, and he narrows his eyes at her. “Something else? Do you know something?”

 

“What? No. I just…” She sighs, frustrated, runs a hand over her face. “Just a feeling.”

 

What kind of feeling? He wants to ask, but he knows a little bit about how pushing doesn’t help, only hurts. He’s pushed and pushed at the walls in his head. All it had ever given him was blackouts and migraines. Instead, he waits.

 

“I’m… Listen, Dean—”

 

“Don’t call me that,” he cuts off. She’s startled; so is he. “It’s not right. It’s something, but it’s not right.”

 

“Okay,” she says gently. “Then what do I call you?”

 

His mouth twists, too sad for a smile. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

 

The quiet is uncomfortable. Sarah clears her throat, and then she keeps going. “Well, I just… I’m not crazy, okay? I’m not totally nuts. But you’re… you know. Different.”

 

“Yes,” he says, because he knows that much.

 

“And I could tell,” she says.

 

“I assumed as much. I also assumed that there was a reason you ended up in my room.”

 

“I’m kind of psychic,” she blurts out, and then cringes, as if waiting for a laugh or a jibe. Perhaps waiting for him to scoff, to leave. To not believe her.

 

All he says, is nothing.

 

“And,” she continues, tentatively, relaxing, muscle by muscle, “I thought I could help you. You were sort of…” She gestured to him and around him. “All… glowy. It was weird. Like an aura, maybe, but _empty_. So, basically,” she says, rushing now—she wants this to be over, because it’s awkward for her and she’s still waiting for a reaction— “I’m here to help, and I can see a lot.”

 

“The future?” he asks, curiously.

 

“Sometimes,” she admits.

 

“The past?” he asks, because it’s more important. She shakes her head, sadly.

 

“But here,” she says, smiling sadly. “I’ll go first—what I want, more than anything right now, is to help you find out who you are. Your turn.”

 

“All I want is… I think…” It’s hard; he didn’t expect it to be that hard. But he remembers—no, he doesn’t. He remembers the _feeling of_ being used and being useful. Being important. “Someone who needs me.”

 

She smiles at him, lopsided and perfect. “Isn’t that what everybody wants?” And then she drops her eyes and her breath hitches. He’s not sure what to ask, so he just looks at her, waits for her to answer the questions he doesn’t know.

 

“I can, uh.” She dares a glance up at him, sheepish if it weren’t for the tears filling her eyes. “I can feel everything you’re feeling. It, um. It _hurts_. _Jesus_.” The last is added in a breath as she wraps her arms around her middle, scowling down at the dirt, eyes on something he can’t see.

 

“And what am I feeling?” he asks. He doesn’t know how to categorize it. He doesn’t know what _it_ is.

 

“Sad,” she answers hollowly, snatching his gaze out of the air and holding it hostage. “Sad and broken and lonely, but most of all, lost. There’s a great, big, gaping hole in you, right there.” She jabs a finger right below the center of his chest. “And I don’t know what that is.”

 

“I do,” he says, and he realizes he does. “I have no grace.”

 

And then everything burns and everything goes black.

 

  _You, Castiel, will never hold your grace again_.

-~-

 

It takes him two days to wake up. When he does, he doesn’t remember a thing.

 

Sarah does, and she tells him a name, a name that he yelled out in a fevered howl.

She calls him _Castiel_. It’s right.

 

-~-

 

“So.” Sarah clears her throat, glaring down at her bowl. It’s more soup, because he turned out to like it. “I was just thinking… I’m going back to the hospital. Maybe you could come back with me. See if you can work something out?”

 

“Yes,” Castiel says, and it’s not hard to agree because he knows it will do nothing. It will mean nothing. He remembers the hospital. He just doesn’t remember the _before_ , and he won’t find it there. So he agrees. They will leave in the morning.

 

-~-

 

In the morning, they leave early. He sits beside her in the car and she turns her music up. It’s a fuzzy riff of the guitar and solid, even drums.

 

“Zeppelin,” she says, with a grin.

 

He answers, “I know.”  It’s automatic.

 

He doesn’t know how, but he knows the words, somewhere— _there’s an angel on my shoulder, in my hand a sword of gold_ —and it’s somewhere warm.

 

He’s smiling when they drive a little too fast with the windows open.

 

 

They stop in the children’s ward first. A child lies in the first bed, surrounded by wires running under her skin and tubes in her throat. She’s skinny, knobs of bone rising from her skin. The black bruises underneath her eyes make her skin look like stained paper, the blue of her veins stark in answer to the thin white robe around her. But when Sarah sits down next to her, she does her best to smile through glazed eyes.

 

“Hey, sweetheart,” Sarah says, smiling back. Castiel wonders how she can smile so widely and so unconcernedly, but then she glances at him, and he can see how it doesn’t quite reach all the way around her. The way her eyes crease with the child’s pain. “This is Lydia,” she tells him, quietly. She turns back to the little girl. She can’t be more than ten. “Lydia, this is my friend Castiel.”

 

“What happened to her?” Castiel asks, voice low. He’s not sure how much would be right to say in front of her. He doesn’t know where or when, but he’s learned _some_ measure of tact, and asking if a little girl will die right in front of _said_ little girl doesn’t feel quite right.

 

“She’s, um.” Those are tears that Sarah tries to talk around. She’s doing well, but not well enough for Lydia not to notice. “She’s really sick, Cas. I just saw her last week. And she wasn’t—” Her voice breaks, but Castiel thinks he gets it. She wasn’t hooked up to machines. She was surviving. Now, the machines are doing the surviving for her, and that can’t last forever.

 

Castiel doesn’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s the way that he sees the little girl—Lydia—close her hand over Sarah’s and squeeze, her eyes still smiling. Perhaps it’s the beeping of the machines, so loud in this silent space. Perhaps it’s an accident.

 

But he reaches forward anyways, walks to the end of the bed and takes both of the child’s hands in his, and looks at her.

 

“You’ll be alright,” he says.

 

The second time he blacks out, he’s ready for it. All he feels is justice served.

 

_No. You can’t. Castiel! It’s not permitted!_

 

He doesn’t care. And this time, he turns the voice off, and he sleeps.

 

-~-

 

_Castiel._

_Castiel_.

 

What’s going on? He’d stopped the voice, severed whatever connection was there. He’d hung up on whatever that _noise_ was, so what now? Why was the noise still there?

 

 _Cas_.

 

What?

 

“ _Cas_.”

 

He opens his eyes. He’s in a hospital bed, in a room almost identical to the first he’d woken up in. Only, this time, he’s wearing his clothes, and the gentle, woozy buzz of chemicals in his veins isn’t there. He’s _sore_ , all along his side. He can feel the bruises forming. He pulls himself up to sit against the headboard.

 

“Ow,” he mutters, surprised despite himself.

 

“Thank god.” Sarah sits in a chair right next to his bed. It looks like she’d been sleeping, her eyes still half closed. “How’re you feeling, clumsy?”

 

He frowns. “Clumsy?” It’s almost comical how quickly things come back. “Oh. I passed out?”

 

Sarah snorts. “No, you fainted. Right in front of me. Right in front of _Lydia_. What the _hell_ happened, Cas?”

 

He fights back a smile. Sarah stares back at him. “Why’re you smiling like that?”

 

Castiel shakes his head. “I’m not sure. But I think it’s because you remind me of someone.”

 

“Yeah, well…” She’s at a loss. It makes him laugh. He doesn’t think he’s ever felt anything stranger, because he’s _laughing,_ and air is tearing and huffing out of his chest like he doesn’t know what to do with it. From Sarah’s expression, she’s never _seen_ anything stranger.

 

“I’m sorry,” he gasps, arms around his middle. Tears are pushing out the corners of his eyes, and it actually feels _good_. “It’s just—”

 

“Are you… feeling okay?” she asks awkwardly. It only sets him off again.

 

There’s a knock at the door.

 

“Sarah? Castiel?” It’s not a voice Castiel recognizes, but he leans forward, breathing heavy but hysterics thankfully composed.

 

Lydia stands in the doorway, a hand against it to hold her steady. She’s barefoot, and every bit as sickly looking as she was in the bed, only her eyes… Her eyes are clear and sharp, and her smile is wide. And she’s not in that bed, unable to move, to speak. She’s walking towards them, arms wide for balance, her bald head gleaming with a thin, healthy layer of sweat.

 

“ _Look_ ,” she breathes.

 

Castiel turns to Sarah. “Tell me if you feel like fainting.”

 

All she can do is look from Castiel to Lydia and back again, mouth working furiously and not a sound coming out.

 

-~-

 

There is a toddler going through heart failure and a teenager with leukemia.

There’s a woman with cystic fibrosis and a man with a brain tumor.

 

After the third one, Castiel can keep conscious; after the fourth, he can stay on his feet. He doesn’t know how he does it, how it’s _possible_. Every time, he waits for it not to work, for them to stare at the strange man holding onto their hands and attempting to cure their ailments, end their pain. But every time it works, and every time he moves on to the next one, and the next.

 

It doesn’t take long for them to come looking for him, some with money, most without. Some give him talismans and artifacts like they expect him to know what they are. He doesn’t say much, simply accepts their donations and fixes them if he can.

 

On one day, it’s a dark-haired woman who looks like darkness. She doesn’t even knock; the door flies open when he and Sarah are sitting down to eat, Zeppelin on the stereo ( _from the houses of the holy, we can watch the white doves go; from the door comes Satan’s daughter, and it only goes to show, you know!)_ and he gets to his feet too slowly to stop the woman from taking Sarah around the neck and holding a long, elaborately carved hunting knife to it, winking back at Castiel.

 

“Let her go.” He doesn’t believe she will for a moment. “Don’t hurt her.” He doesn’t believe this will happen, either.

 

Sarah doesn’t look like she does, either—her muscles relax against Meg, and she catches Castiel’s eyes, and slowly, deliberately, blinks at him. It’s not desperate, but it’s not exactly hopeful. It says, quite plainly, _what are you gonna do?_ It’s out of her hands. It’s her, forfeiting. Like she saw this coming. She lowers the hands she raised in reflex and does her best to breathe evenly. Castiel wonders if psychics see their death. If she knows where this will end before he does.

 

“Let. Her. Go.” It’s alright. Castiel is desperate enough for the both of them. She’s good, Sarah’s nothing but _good_ , and the pale, dark-haired woman is anything but.

 

“It’s okay, Cassie,” she purred. Her pretty red mouth dropped down into a perfect, vile o. “Ooh. You don’t even _remember_ me, do ya, kiddo?” She grins. “Meg. Hiya.”

 

He doesn’t care. He holds out a hand. “Sarah—” Meg takes a step back. He’s stuck. “I’m so sorry—”

 

“Don’t worry about it, Cas. You’re not the psycho with a knife,” she says. Meg’s arm around her throat tightens, choking off the sound.

 

“Be a good hostage,” she says, “and shut up. So listen. Cas.” She cocks her head towards him, smile still wide and bitter. “I need a little… angelic assistance. So how’s about we step right outside, and we have ourselves a little chat?”

 

“What are you—let her go, first,” he says quickly. “I’ll do anything you want. I swear.” Every fiber of his being is itching to do something, _anything_ , but he doesn’t know what or how. He only knows a knife against Sarah’s throat and an itching in his palms.

 

Meg pouts. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let her go…” Her eyes flash black like the pupils have swallowed up the inside of her head and Castiel stumbles back, the backs of his thighs hitting the low table. “When you do as I say.”

 

“Your eyes—”

 

“What—” She blinks and frowns, and it—whatever _it_ was—is gone, eyes brown again. Brown, but not nearly human enough. “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with him?” She tugs Sarah around, who shakes her head, mute. “You’re _kidding_ me.”

 

Meg thrusts Sarah away from her, and Castiel catches her, pulling her towards him and behind him. He hasn’t got a weapon, he’s never _needed_ one.

 

 _That’s a lie_ , a voice at the back of his head, a voice so much softer than the voices he hasn’t heard in weeks _. Remember?_

 

No. He doesn’t. But he feels the ghost of a weight in his hand, a weight he knows how to wield, to burn, to destroy.

 

Meg spits on the floor.

 

“So basically,” she sneers, “you’re _useless_. You don’t even remember, do you? You’re chock out of magic juice. You good for nothing…” She trails off, running a hand down her face. “Awesome. That’s awesome. _You_.” She points at them with the jagged end of her knife. Castiel feels Sarah flinch back, her hands clinging to his shoulders. “Did you know about this?” It takes him a moment to realize she’s talking to Sarah. He nudges her gently, feels her trembling.

 

“Uh, no?” she squeaks.

 

Meg raises one perfectly stenciled brow. “Oh, really.”

 

“No I do _not,_ ” Sarah splutters, indignant and about as ferocious as an aggravated kitten. “I don’t. I’m not even— Listen, I realize your _delusions_ must be freakishly strong, but—”

 

Castiel feels the shift before the laughter starts. A bright light, somewhere just out of the corner of his eye, disappears. It goes out. It can’t be real—he’s sure it is— but it stuns him regardless, blinds him for a moment. And the laughter takes its place, black as night, and Sarah—who isn’t Sarah, not now—pats him, twice, on the shoulder, and steps around him.

 

“I’m sorry,” she sighs, wiping away an invisible tear. “I can’t. I just… _can’t_.” There’s something unbearably ugly behind her blank smile, and he can’t help but look away. “I mean, _look at you_.” He looks at them, instead, at the way Meg doesn’t so much as blink when Sarah walks towards her and takes the knife from her hand. “You look so _confused_. Good Sarah, _sweet_ Sarah, playing prophet as the day is long…” She shakes her head, mouth screwed up in a dirty leer. “Do you have any idea how long I was stuck in here? And I was so _sure_ you’d figure it out, that you’d see me, somehow, but you didn’t, did you? You couldn’t see me under all her _goodness_. So you healed, and you hid—oh, but it’s not hiding. _No._ It’s _running away_.”

 

“Get out of her!” Castiel spits, and he’s never been so _helpless_ before. He’s leaning forward in a fighting stance he doesn’t remember learning, empty hands raised like he could actually do something, which is stupid, _stupid_ muscle memory, because he doesn’t _need_ muscle right now, dammit, he _needs to know what’s going on._

 

Sarah snorts. “Ooh.” She waves her hands in the air. “Scary.” And with a flick of her wrist, he’s flung up against the wall, pressure like a train car pressing down against him, doing its damndest to push him through the wall.

 

“Well,” Meg says ruefully, hands on her hips. “Can’t say I saw that coming. Oh wait.”

 

 _I can help you_. Castiel cries out. He feels a rib crack.  He has twenty-three left. Twenty-three, and she broke the first one like an afterthought.. He almost wants to laugh. He doesn’t have time. He strains against the invisible bonds. There’s another crack. He can’t cry out; he’s to busy choking on blood. _A lung, then. Two of those. Only one left of those_. Castiel is going to die here, die by something he neither knows nor understands, and there’s nothing he can do to help Sarah.

 

The thought does nothing but make him thrash harder against invisible bonds.

 

Sarah tuts, walking towards him. “Don’t strain yourself, darling. You might break something.”

 

“ _Eat me_ ,” he gasps out, doing his best to glare around the white-hot pain. There’s another crack. This time, he notices with some relief, it’s the plaster. She’s only forcing him through the wall.

 

Meg cackles. She’s moved closer to the door, hand resting on the handle. “He’s sassy. Glad he hasn’t lost that.”

 

Sarah raised an eyebrow. “You know… most people would be a little more worried right about now.”

 

 _Let me help you_!

 

“I’m not that smart,” Castiel growls. _Fine_ , he says. And the voice swells with something like disembodied relief.

 

_Repeat this. Exorcizamus te. Omnis immunde spiritus. Omnis Satanica potestas._

 

Castiel’s mouth moves around the syllables like he’s done it before, and Sarah twitches. Her eyes widen.

 

“How—”

 

“ _Omnis incursio infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,”_ he says quickly, voice urging him forwards.

 

“ _No_ ,” Sarah howls, clamping her hands over her ears. Whatever the voice is telling him, it’s working; the force on his chest disappears and he falls to the floor, blood pooling from his lips, but, hey. The train’s gone.

 

“ _Omnis congregatio et secta diabolica,”_ he says quickly. Meg catches his eye from across the room, her mouth clamped shut and her arms around her middle. The both of them jerk and twitch, ugly black smoke leaking from between their lips. 

 

“Cas-tiel,” Meg pants, raising a hand. “I didn’t—do this. _She_ did—” She chokes, bent in half. “Oh, hell—”

 

She waves her hand.

 

The bookshelf in the corner has never been heavy. ( _Castiel helped Sarah build it. He got lost in Ikea. She laughed for half an hour and bought him Swedish meatballs. After he’d finished, she brought over tea and tossed all her magazines onto a shelf. There is a picture of them in a children’s ward. Everyone is smiling, nobody wider than Sarah._ )

 

It’s almost poetic, the way that it crashes against him and knocks him out, wood splintering and magazines flying.

 

-~-

 

Sarah toes at the magazine on top of Castiel’s head and tips his slack face towards her with her foot. “Huh. Unconscious, under a pile of half-naked women. What an angel.”

 

She looks over at Meg. “ScarJo’s on the cover. You want?”

 

Meg isn’t listening. She’s too busy stopping down to tug a long, conical silver blade from her boot. It shines in the kitchen’s shallow fluorescents. Meg shrugs when she sees her staring.

 

“Never have I ever had _any_ problem kicking someone when they’re down. Or, hey, stabbing an angel while he’s unconscious. Unless you’d rather do the honors?”

 

Sarah purses her lips and turns back to him, takes in the way the blood flows freely from a slash across his scalp, the stutter of his heart, the humanity positively _leaking_ out of him.

 

“No,” she says finally, turning back to Meg. “Leave him.”

 

Meg blinks. “Okay, run that by me one more time.”

 

“Look at him.” Sarah waves her hand from Castiel’s prone form to the rest of the room. It’s clean, but it’s small, dingy. The carpet is frayed, the lights are dim, there’s a water stain in the corner of the ceiling. “It’s almost… sad, isn’t it? _This_ is the angel who took over heaven? No. He’s not an angel. He’s reduced to parlor tricks to make him feel a little more powerful.”

 

Sarah crouches down next to him, tucking a lock of hair behind his ear. “Nope. I’m not scared of him. He’s _less_ than human.” She smiles. “He’s nothing. And that’s a far greater punishment than death could ever give.”

 

Sarah stands and turns back to Meg. Meg just looks at her, sliding her knife back into her boot and standing straight, crossing her arms over her chest. “So, so what? You’re just going away? Checking out?”

 

Sarah snorts. “Don’t irritate me, Meg. _I_ might be a renegade, but _you’re_ a fugitive.” She takes a step back, running her hands across the girl that contains her. She was good. Sweet. Gentle. She was exactly what Castiel expected her to be. _Needed_ her to be. Almost like a gift from the god that never cared.

 

Sarah smirks. _Sure_. She could leave the angel his life. And even his little handler. But maybe she’d leave a little gift first. Something in this little bitch’s head, something to leave them a little… fun.

 

She closes her eyes.

 

It only takes a moment, planting an IED, and then she’s waving to Meg and leaving her with one last wide, taunting smile. “Bye-bye, Meggy-poo. I’m sure someone’ll be seeing you soon. Oh, but… you might want to sleep with one eye open.” She winks.

 

Sarah’s head snaps back, mouth open and an ungodly howl ripping from her throat, along with a great, black cloud, rippling from her mouth and spreading across the ceiling.

 

And then the storm is gone and Sarah’s body collapses, right next to Castiel.

 

Meg sags against the door, breath coming out shaky, but, hey, it’s coming out, so at least she’s not dead. Yet.

 

“Well, would you look at that?” she mutters, glaring down at Castiel. “Even stupid and useless, you manage to screw me over.”

 

All he does is breathe in answer, in and out and human.

 

Meg leaves when the sun brushes the skyline.

 

-~-

 

When they wake up, Sarah is on the couch and Castiel is on the carpet. Castiel asks what she put in their soup. It’s a joke. Sarah laughs, and he comes close. He’s close enough to fake it, regardless, and, because it makes her happy, he does.

 

They visit another hospital. Another picture joins the first on the bookshelf. It’s just funny, Sarah comments, that it’s dust free and spotless, and didn’t she leave a coffee ring at this corner?

 

Castiel has become very good at noncommittal noises.

 

The day that Sarah starts forgetting things, Castiel doesn’t think anything of it. To forget is to err, and to err is human. When she wakes up, and doesn’t know where she is, he starts to worry. When she doesn’t wake up at all, he tries to heal her.

 

It’s the doctors who tell him that her mind is gone.

 

It could have been worse, they say. It could have been painful.

 

He thinks of a beautifully ornate knife at her throat and panic in her eyes. He thinks of her eyes that are not her own, that flash blacker than pitch and deadly as sin. He doesn’t tell anyone about the nightmares, doesn’t know where they came from. He asks the doctors what he’s supposed to do now. He’s never even met her family. He doesn’t know who to tell.

 

So he moves on, with keys given to him by a grateful family ( _Samantha, 14, wild animal attack, lost a lung_ ), in a battered ’67 Malibu – _so close and yet not right_ —and when the voice tries to give him directions, he silences it. There are hospitals all over the world. He can do something for Sarah. He can keep going.

 

He bumps into a dark-haired woman in the street a couple towns over. His hand immediately flies to the inside of his long black coat, reaching for something and grasping nothing but air. She smiles at him and says excuse me when she walks past. It’s only muscle memory, he tries to tell himself, heart thudding in his ears and a snarl forming across his lips. But he’s never felt muscle memory like this. And he’s never felt so helpless. 


End file.
